Light Collective

Stellar // Marfa

Thank you to everyone who participated, organised, helped and generally made this one of the most inspiring events ever.

Ending with a captivating sunset and “star” gazing session with Astro Mucho at MAINTENANT Marfa.

Stellar Marfa - the experience that just keeps on giving.

Yesterday was a day of sharing knowledge, art, darkness and light. The community created in such a short space of time is super inspiring.

The first night in Marfa was absolutely Stellar. The architecture tours, the dinner, the company all added to an amazing experience under the stars. Ending with the Marfa Lights. Wow.

First night in Marfa and it did not disappoint. The sky was clear, the town was dark and the stars were out.

From sunset along the train tracks, to lovely red neon and a stunning sunrise. Looking forward to the rest of team arriving later today.

Just arrived in Marfa, Texas one day ahead of the workshop with and this place is amazing.

Can’t wait to see it at night and venture just outside the city limits for some dark skies.

It was a long straight road to get here with a stop at Prada Marfa and the Valentine Bar.

On the second day of +building we celebrated 10 years of the Lighting Design 40 under 40 programme. Over the years, we’ve had lots of conversations and about how much the programmes means to all the past winners, some even citing it as the point they doubled down on their lighting career.

We started the 10 year anniversary by honouring this years winners. This year we had over 150 entries, from 32 countries and, every year, we ask six high profiles judges to get involved and give them the hard task of finding 40 winners. Getting into that last 40 is really difficult and we see some people who we know are amazing designers come really close. If you didn’t win this year, please keep trying.

Following on from the winners for 2025 we invited winners from 2016 onwards to come to the stage and share why they chose light and what they get from being involved in this amazing profession. It was an emotional, moving, inspiring and illuminating session. Thank you to all our speakers.

The biggest thank you goes to everyone who joined us at the end of Monday afternoon to celebrate the winners and listen to the speakers. Once again it was a full house with plenty of networking afterwards.

As always, thanks to FILIX Lighting and Selux Lighting for their support.

Light + Building 2026 felt different this year. Hall 3.0 had a calm confidence, Hall 4.0 a real buzz, and Hall 5.0 felt fresh and open. We even ventured to Halls 8.0 and 9.0 for those often-forgotten inspirations. There was a renewed energy from everyone we spoke to; it felt truly rewarding to be there.

Our biggest highlight was the people. There’s magic when the lighting community gathers in person, and this year we felt it more than ever. If you weren’t there, you were missed!

Product highlights were numerous, but using our "show us your top 3" trick, here is what stood out:

Zumtobel Lighting
Their space reminded us of the early days when Zumtobel changed how we spoke about light. Healing spaces, integrated acoustics, beautiful detailing, embedded AI, and a full commitment to circularity made it feel like they were truly creating lit spaces for people.

Anolis Lighting
The team launched an amazing new projector family, bringing back the excitement of L+B as the pinnacle of the product cycle. Swapping lenses to create moving light effects with no moving parts was a real standout.

KERAI_LIGHT - 1001K Light
A "designed spectrum," tunable from 3000K to a 1001K amber glow. The exterior applications are fascinating. Sophya Acosta’s installation emphasized the firelight feel, paired with incredible metal finishes created by artists.

Other brilliant highlights:

Tony Esposito’s talk on Colour Metrics at Targetti Sankey.
The heavenly white oasis and hospitality at LEDFlex Group.
Being part of the Bucket List on the Signify stand.
Catching up with Tad Trylski, Emma Cogswell, and Paul Drosihn at DALI Alliance.
Chatting with Randy Reid.
The Selux Lighting product launch & dinner.
The AI Lounge, the IALD Awards and walking home through the misty Frankfurt light.

It was amazing to see so many of this wonderful lighting family from around the world—thank you all for your time and conversations!

The fact that, this year, Light + Building started on International Women's Day was a great opportunity to celebrate 7 years of this amazing community. The turnout was incredible and we really want to thank everyone that came along to listen, network and collect their amazing gift.

The gift, the WIL tool belt was created by our long term partner and super supporter in the WIL project - formalighting. It marks the launch of our new campaign where we are aiming to show that Women in Lighting get out there and get involved on site. Google images returns about 30% of site photo’s showing women and mostly they are mixed images of men and women. The other 70% are just men and we want to change this so get your WIL tool belt on and send us a photo from site!

Our speakers were amazing, showing the fantastic depth of experience in this community from high end lighting design to product design to high tech fashion and architainment. Thank you to our amazing speakers - Sally Storey, Erika Baffico, Clara Daguin, Daphné Delbeke and Akari-Lisa ISHII. The event was expertly moderated and hosted by Sabine De Schutter, the German ambassador for the WIL project, and the new social campaign was introduced by Katia Kolovea.

We’re sure your feeds will be full of Light + Building content for the next few weeks but we really wanted to share the joy and power that this community brings when it gets together. Massive thanks to Light + Building for allowing us to celebrate in style on their design plaza.



design

Great to share the stage with so many creative and inspiring people on the celebration of the back page bucket list curated for

Incredible turn out at in the design plaza for session!